Our Approach

First, We Work With You to
Address Your Critical Issues

This is the First Step in a 
Transformational Process

With Well-Defined Steps and Early Payback

First, we help you address your critical issues.

We work with you to define the critical issues in detail, identify potential approaches and develop the project scope (phased, if appropriate).

The FastTrack mapping tools accelerate and enhance the process .

These initial FastTrack maps can be used as the basis of an ongoing, dynamic knowledge base of critical marketplace and organizational information.

When it's time to refine your Business Purpose and Strategic Direction, we extend the information already accumulated in the FastTrack Knowledge Base to understand:

	The Realized and Potential Value in your potential market segments;
	How your core competencies match up with the Potential Value;
	How that can be turned into offerings with Real and Distinct Value; and
	Key factors for successful "Delivery Strategies"

This FastTrack Knowledge Base can then be used and updated on an ongoing basis as a framework for coherent strategic and tactical decisions

Take Care of the Urgent, Without Mortgaging the Important!

As the CEO of a major telecommunications company told us during one project:
"Strategy is critical but, in the meantime, we've got to be able to breathe!"

Our approach to working with you successfully addresses that dilemma.

We work with you to address immediate priorities - but in a way that is unlikely to conflict with longer-term decisions and that uses a knowledge base that is scalable for use in addressing overall purpose and direction

Assessment

We make it easy to get started. We start with a two day engagement.

We use our FastTrack 3-D Mapping Tools to help you articulate your most critical issues and to map out these issues, together with related SWOTS, needs and possible initiatives in a FastTrack Navigator map. As part of this, we recommend a half-day, uninterrupted session with you and your team.

We can then use this "Current Issues" map to link to potential strategies, tactics and initiatives.

We help you focus on solutions which focus on Value as part of the solution. For example, we might look at getting a better understanding of the value of an offering in order to develop better value propositions and messaging for an offering that's just not selling the way it should. Or, we might look at ancillary services that can be implemented to increase the distinct value of the offering.

The potential solutions can then be assigned to phases - all documented within the Map.

The components of the first phase are then assigned to a timeline with time and resource estimates.

From Fighting Fires to Setting Direction

We try to make this transition as easy as possible. Even if you have defined your company's direction, You will typically have current issues that have a high priority. In either event, the work we help you do builds toward a foundation for developing or validating your direction.

Immediately below is a graphic which shows how the FastTrack Maps for your business evolve as we make this transition. And the content of these maps forms a Knowledge Base (in Microsoft SQL Server^®) of your environment: markets, offerings, competition, stakeholders, SWOTs and strategies.

As many (including Peter Drucker) have pointed out, we are moving (or have moved) from an industrial economy to a knowledge economy. We help you to retain and manage your knowledge in a logical and action-oriented form.
 

Addressing Your Critical Issues

We start with the "Current Issues" Map developed during the Assessment (see column at left).

Because we focus on Value in addressing Issues, we usually have to better understand the Value you already deliver and/or enhance that Value with additional (preferably Distinct) Value. That means understanding the customer's situation, goals and needs - and where your offerings provide help. This helps you to develop a total understanding of the Value delivered to customers within each segment - for improved positioning or messaging.

We do this by mapping out the customer's environment (including their Goals, Needs, SWOTS and potential solutions). We can then see how well your offerings map to their needs - and define enhancements you might provide to increase the Value of your offerings.

If solutions involve a better working relationship with a stakeholder (for instance, one of your sales channels), we help you lay out a map of the Stakeholder's Goals, Issues, SWOTS and Needs and identify how you can increase the effectiveness of the partnership and the Value developed through your synergy.

A Manageable Scope - with Short-Term Results
The concise way in which the project or project phase is defined in the Initial Engagement (see left column) leads to a focused plan and well-defined mutual expectations for resulting tasks and deliverables.

A Basis for Addressing Other Problems and Defining Your Purpose and Direction
Despite the focus of the initial work on specific priorities, the resulting maps, (at various Layers of the Navigator model) are structured so that they can be used and extended to address other specific issues.

The results can be extended to view the entire organization and its offerings and markets - for defining or refining a complete set of Fundamental Strategies and your Business Purpose.

For more on how we help you address critical issues, please click here.

Strategic Management:
Developing a Value-Driven Purpose

The heart of strategic management is knowing your Purpose; the impact that you have in the marketplace. This is embedded in What You Offer and Who and How You Serve. These are the Value Creation Strategies and are developed based on the factors illustrated in the following diagram:

In order to Create Value, you have to understand the customer and their environment. In order to Create Distinct Value, you have to understand how those needs are currently met - especially by your competitors. We use a number of techniques, some common and some unique, to develop this understanding.

The key to our approach is how we incorporate this information in the strategy-development process. We map, for each critical market segment, your customer's environment in a way that you can see how different Value Creation Strategies would fit and how strongly you are, or would be, positioned in each segment.

If we have worked with you to address one or more critical issues prior to developing overall Strategic Direction, some of your critical market segments will already be mapped, since the solution to almost any critical business issue involves understanding the customer.

Other critical strategic decisions (Value Delivery Strategies) are shown in the bottom section (in the darker blue ellipses) of the diagram, below. Elements of your Value Creation strategies will be embedded in Value Delivery. For example, if Customer Relationship or Intimacy is part of the Distinct Value you provide, this will affect the way you sell, deliver, install and service your offering.

Developing the
FastTrack "Markets and Strategies" Map Folder Content
and the FastTrack Knowledge Base

The Value Delivery Strategies shown in the diagram above also have more traditional names:

	Buy or Build the Offering (Production or Procurement Strategy)
	Communicate the Value (Marketing Strategy)
	Get Commitment to the Offering (Sales Strategy)
	Get the Offering to the Customer (Distribution Strategy)
	Enable the Value (Installation or Implementation Strategy)
	Ensure Ongoing Value (Service Strategy)

For more detail on the background to our approach to strategic management, please click here.